Turning Partnerships into Impact: Lessons from NL-CGIAR & UK-CGIAR at CGIAR Science Week 2025

The Science Week session, “Leveraging Science Excellence and Development Impact Through Partnerships,” wonderfully moderated by Phyllis Ombonyo (Director of Strategy and Engagement, international Development at CABI) therefore delved into exploring practical lessons, critical success factors, as well as key challenges in building effective collaborations with CGIAR. The conversation with diverse speakers and audience shared the commitment to not just doing research, but doing it together and doing it better.

Two Approaches to Partnership with CGIAR, One Shared Purpose

• The United Kingdom (UK)-CGIAR Centre
  Richard Shaw, Director of the UK-CGIAR Centre, shared how the Centre was created to bridge a crucial gap. On the one hand, valuable UK agricultural research wasn’t consistently reaching global agricultural practice. On the other, CGIAR lacked systematic access to that research. The Centre was established to solve both issues by forming impact-focused research collaborations between UK science institutions and CGIAR, especially with an eye toward application in lower- and middle-income countries.
  
  Read the CABI blog on the event here
  
  
• The Netherlands-CGIAR Strategic Partnership
  Representing the Netherlands, Mariëlle Karssenberg (Netherlands Food Partnership) and Gerrie Tuitert (Coordinator, NL-CGIAR Research Programme at the Dutch Research Council) shared how the partnership has grown into a mature model of strategic and long-term collaboration with CGIAR. Initially a funding relationship, the partnership now serves as a platform to facilitate co-creation and targeted brokering by bringing together not only scientists, but also looking at the strategic roles that civil society actors, policymakers and private sector stakeholders can play in such partnerships. Focus in the partnership is placed on those areas where there is comparative advantage.
  
  Key elements of the Dutch approach include:
  - A six-year funding cycle anchored in an MoU with CGIAR, supporting both CGIAR’s core portfolio and targeted research areas where Dutch expertise complements CGIAR work.
  - A NL-CGIAR Research Programme, which includes a program that embeds Dutch researchers part-time in CGIAR.
  - Dedicated brokering and convening by the Netherlands Food Partnership to support partners find each other, build trust, and turn knowledge into action through stronger partnerships.

What Makes Partnerships Work?

A lively panel discussion with contributions from Sandra Milach (Chief Scientist, CGIAR), Dennis Rangi (Director General, Development, CABI), Rachel Lambert (Head of Food & Agriculture Research and Evidence Team, UK FCDO), Benjamin Kivuva (Assistant Director, Crop Production and Seed Systems, KALRO), and Pim van der Male (First Secretary, Food Security and Water, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kenya) followed the presentation of the two partnership examples.

They reflected on what really underpins successful collaboration. Sharing some of the key insights from that conversation:

• Start with a shared problem.
  Sandra Milach pointed to the importance of partnerships to be anchored in a joint understanding of the issue at hand, rather than driven by project cycles or institutional branding.
  “We should start with the big problems that we are all here to solve.”
• Invest in the relationship.
  Pim van der Male reminded the audience that meaningful partnerships take time to build:
  “Successful, meaningful partnerships take time to evolve... There is also cost, procedural cost, involved in establishing partnerships, and we sometimes overlook that.”
• Prioritize equity and inclusion.
  Rachel Lambert called for stronger inclusion of national research partners:
  “We have to kind of really challenge ourselves on the proportion of funding going to NARS partners and follow the resources. We'll need quite fundamental resource shifts, I think, in order to support genuinely equitable partnerships.”
• Avoid assumptions about capacity.
  Dennis Rangi highlighted the risk of power imbalances:
  “There is always an assumption that one partner is superior to the other... there is always that lack of appreciation on the part of what is seemingly the senior partner... that the junior partner has already built their capacity.
• Ensure early involvement of all actors.
  Benjamin Kivuva emphasized the importance of involving operational staff and service providers from the outset, not just leadership:
  “When a program is being developed, the high-level staff are involved in prioritizing the objectives, but the operational staff are not involved at that level... if they are delayed in knowing what these objectives are, then it will affect the implementation of the program.”
• Make principles explicit.
  Sandra Milach closed with a reminder that partnerships should be guided by clear values:
  “When we start a partnership, it's very important that we define the principles of engagement that we're gonna go for... how we make ourselves accountable for the things that we agree... how we respond when things go wrong.”

Voices from the Audience: Youth, Private Sector, and What Comes Next

The audience brought new energy into the room following the insights shared by the panelists. The questions where spot on and incredibly relevant in our current context

• What role does the private sector play in sustaining partnerships?
  The panelists pointed to that rather than being viewed merely as financiers, the private sector was recognized as a vital partner in innovation and scaling.
  “We can't scale most or many innovations without the private sector, whether that's commercial seed systems, or whether that's livestock treatments, drugs, vaccines, the private sector and harnessing finance and finding innovative ways of capturing that finance will be absolutely critical to scaling innovation.” said Rachel Lambert
  Sandra Milach highlighted the need to position science and innovation where private actors can engage, and where it makes business sense and noted the value of comparative advantage.
  Pim van der Male also shared examples of programmes involving the private sector in translating research into enterprise, including a Dutch co-financed initiative on animal feed and fodder innovation with Kalro and other research partners in Kenya
  
  
• How do we future-proof partnerships amid changing funding landscapes?
  The panel acknowledged the difficult reality that global development funding, including ODA, is shifting. Rachel Lambert reflected on the need to be more strategic and coordinated, especially when resources are limited:
   We need to be realistic about the shift that’s happening... we need to leverage funding from other sources, including the private sector... maybe we need to be smarter in our partnerships... join up more effectively... so that we aren’t fragmented and we make the best use of every dollar or pound that we’ve got.” She also noted the importance of finding new routes to support long-term research, including climate finance, philanthropy, and innovative co-financing models.
  
• How are youth and early-career professionals being engaged?
  This pointed question received enthusiastic support from the panel. Pim van der Male mentioned that while the Senior Expert Programme (as part of the NWO NL-CGIAR Research Programme) focuses on established researchers, it allows for the supervision of early career researchers for their PhD. Several of the other panelists also expressed interest in exploring complementary initiatives to engage early-career professionals.
  “I think the most important thing is that youth is the future of food systems,” said Sandra Milach.
  Dennis Rangi echoed this sentiment, noting that CABI has integrated youth as a strategic lens across its work.
  “We all know that farmers are growing old, and we need to make agriculture more appealing. It is the biggest employer”

Also explore CGIAR's Closing Post with the key takeaways from the Science Week 2025